Electricity costs breaking the back of Greek households

As newspaper "Kathimerini" says, with the crisis income has declined dramatically in recent years and the proportion of the unemployed remains steadily close to 20%, kilowatt per hour of electricity costs as much as in Sweden, where not only the climatic conditions are completely different but the per capita income is 2.5 times higher.

The same level of prices is paid in Austria, and Eurostat figures show that many other European nations with incomes larger than those of Greeks are paying lower amounts. France, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and several others are subject to lower costs for electricity.

In the first half of 2017, Greek consumers paid more per kilowatt hour by 12.8% compared to the same half of 2016, compared with an average EU rise of 0.5%. This is the second largest increase after Cyprus (22%), but the Cypriot grid is an isolated electrical system (without interconnections).

Greeks continue to pay for gas even though the price is burdened with the lowest levels of taxation in Europe.

An indicative of the burden on the highly regulated Greek market is that the percentage of regulated charges on the electricity bill stood at 41% in the first half of the year.

While gas prices in the EU in the first half of the year fell by 6.3%, in Greece they fell only by 0.7% compared to the corresponding half of 2016. At the same time, in the neighboring countries of the Balkans, consumers benefited from large reductions. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, prices dropped by 21.4%, in Croatia by 17.5%, in Serbia by 14.2% and in Bulgaria by 10.3%.

Thus, Greek households end up in the first half of 2017 having to pay the ninth highest price for electricity among EU countries. and the 11th for natural gas.